Snug as two bugs in a rug

[Click to enlarge]

This is the quilt my Mom made and gave to Leslie and me for Christmas. We were actually last in line - she's made quilts for all five grandchildren and four great grandchildren first. That's OK. It was worth the wait. Isn't it pretty?

When I was growing up I had a quilt my Grandma (Mom's mom) had made for me that had all my aunts and uncles and cousins names on it (up to that point in time). I wore it out. It is now very frayed and fragile and in a storage box in the garage. Nothing like sleeping under Grandma love to feel warm and snuggly.

Thanks, Mom!

My hero

May I be a curmudgeon for a moment? I know, it's a rare thing for me to be that way, but just bear with me.

I am sure I am not the first person to make this observation, but after watching the four kids (including Morgann, who's 22) play Guitar Hero 3 on the Wii for something like six hours straight, it hit me that if they were putting in that much practice (6 hours / 4 people = 1.5 hours per person) on a real guitar then in a pretty short while they'd be good guitar players. Not great, perhaps, but good.

But it's more fun to stand in front of a screen and pretend and after just a few hours of practice be a "guitar hero". Watch my point score rise, baby!

Harrumph.

We don't do a very good job of encouraging musicianship in this house. Sure, there's a piano the kids can play, and every once in a while Erin picks out the melody on a few songs from the music books or Jon noodles on it freestyle. Jon and Gloria got guitars for Christmas one year, but neither have shown much long-term interest. But here's the thing - while Les plays the piano from time to time and while we play music on the stereo in the background all the time, there's no concerted, ongoing, consistent effort to show the kids music is a worthwhile thing. Oh, Erin asked for piano lessons one year, and then was bored pretty quickly (I think she was too young). And we would gladly pay for lessons on anything if any of the kids asked.

But while we allow them to play on the piano or their guitars or Erin's recorder whenever they want we don't encourage them to play (especially not that damned recorder! :o), and other than Les playing the piano once in a blue moon, they don't see us play anything, either, and certainly not regularly. If I pulled out my bass they wouldn't be encouraged to play anything anyway! And we never make it a family event, something that multiple people do together. In fact, once one of them starts playing the piano it ends up with the kids fighting over who gets to play it next.

I am going to make a broad generalization here - for most kids that grow up playing an instrument, not for school band or because they're made to take lessons but for the sheer joy of it, I wonder if they're most likely in a family of musicians? Families who pull out the guitar or the fiddle or sit at the piano after dinner as easy as if they were watching TV? I am sure there are those who are excellent musicians who grew up playing guitar all by themselves in their bedroom, but I've done that and been there and it's hard to maintain enthusiasm that way (doubly hard if you play something that is really meant to be played with other instruments - like a bass, for example). But if it's a family thing, if there's always someone else around who will say, "Sure!" to the question, "Do you want to play something?", then I have to believe those children are going to grow up with a more inate sense of music as natural and fun and something worthwhile to spend time practicing on.

And for the rest of us we can take comfort in the knowledge that our kids will grow up being really good at Guitar Hero and Rock Band. Rock on!

Bird watching

I was scanning a bunch of family photos today, mostly so I could post them on Facebook and tag various people and make them feel embarrassed (I know, I know, it's childish - but fun!). Anyway, I noticed a certain "theme", shall we say, running through many of the pictures of my demure bride in her younger years. The following aren't even all the samples available. See if you can figure it out.

It's a major award!, part 2

We opened gifts here Christmas Eve with my folks so that we could fit in Les's folks on Christmas and then get Erin, Jon and Gloria over to their father's to have yet another round of opening that night. The kids didn't get many gifts from us this year because their main gift was the Wii I won, and we figured once it got opened everything else would be ignored, anyway. Mom and Dad got them Wii Play with an extra controller, which was good because the controller that came with the Wii didn't work (and since it was a prize I couldn't return it). So Christmas was saved. Then Les's brother Matt and his wife Brenda got them Guitar Hero 3, so I'd say they're set until the twins' birthday in March.

Video games make kids slackjawed before they even have the box open.

From 2008-12-24 - Christmas Eve at Home

Now we know what was in the car trunk in Repo Man.

From 2008-12-24 - Christmas Eve at Home

"Nintendo Nation" (note the two Nintendo DS's in evidence as well as the Wii).

From 2008-12-24 - Christmas Eve at Home

Update: We found out the remote did work after getting another one today and learning that they actually have to be synchronized to the console. Doh! We in computers call that RTFM.

No crying he makes

Christmas carols. Love 'em or hate 'em. Just don't take your theology from them. I especially liked this:

4. Away in a Manger

Let’s get rid of the fake Reformation history first: This was not written by Martin Luther. As the incredible website The Hymns and Carols of Christmas notes, “Verses 1 and 2 appeared anonymously in Little Children’s Book for Schools and Families, by J. C. File, Philadelphia, 1885, and verse 3 is by John Thomas McFarland (1851-1913).”

As for the theological history, several scholars have noted a bit of heresy in the line, “no crying he makes.” The argument is that such a line denies Jesus’ humanity. More recently, N.T. Wright has criticized the hymn for emphasizing heaven rather than the New Earth. (“Fit us for heaven to live with thee there.”)

We had a family theological argument over dinner about three weeks ago about this carol, because Erin proclaimed that "Baby Jesus never cried" and cited this as her proof. Well, I couldn't let that one just stand and sent Jon off to fetch the Bible and search through the Gospels for all the stories of Jesus's birth and childhood and lo!, nowhere is it mentioned that He didn't cry (or that He did, for that matter). Then we had a long conversation about taking things like Christmas songs as Biblical truth, and that even something you may sing in parochial school for the Christmas program in the church may not be quite accurate, even though it can be a fine song.

May there be no crying made in your households today.

Merry Christmas!

[h.t. Paul]

Good tidings

Listen to the angel's song, all you who have a troubled heart! "I bring you good tidings of great joy!" Jesus did not come to condemn you. If you want to define Christ rightly, then pay heed to how the angel defines Him, namely, "a great joy!"
- Martin Luther

May you have a joyful Christmas!

Mixed messages

I took this picture in a motel room in Killeen, Texas in July of 2006. It's worth meditating on for it's Zen-like paradox.

[Yes, it's an upside-down ash tray.]

Curry favor with flavored curry

[It seems without trying that I loosely follow a tradition to post a recipe on Sundays, often of something I cooked the night before while listening to Garrison Keillor. Today is no different. It's Sunday now but I am going to schedule this to publish tomorrow because I've already posted twice today and you're tired of listening to me.]

I've hit upon the following curry recipe, refining and revising it over the past year. Morgann likes it a lot and so do I, and as the only two "curryheads" in the house it is a fairly frequent entry in our Saturday night menu rotation when Les is at work and the kids at their father's or grandparents. I would say this dish is a blend of influences, mostly Indian and Thai, and not strictly "authentic". It is good, though.

Ingredients

• 1-1½ lbs meat (sirloin steak, lamb or boneless and skinless chicken breasts all work well) cut into ½"-1" cubes, salted and peppered
  
• 1 onion, diced fine
• 8-10 fresh garlic cloves, diced
  
• 1 fresh bell pepper (red is good), diced
• 2-3 fresh jalapeños, seeded and diced fine or cut in long thin slivers (or dice another fresh bell pepper if you don't want it as spicy, although this dish isn't that hot!)
• 1 stalk fresh celery, minced (save the leaves, chop them and put aside)
  
• 1 15 oz can coconut milk
• 1 15 oz can garbanzo beans (chickpeas), drained
• 2-3 tbs peanut butter (really - it's part of what makes the flavor of this dish)
  
• 2-4 tbs curry powder (I use lots)
  
• 3 oz tomato paste (half a small can or equivalent if you use tomato paste from a tube)
• 4-5 tbs extra virgin olive oil
• salt

Garnishes

Serve with any mix of one to three of the following. Let each person add their own at the table. The top three are what we had last night, but I've used all the garnishes listed here at one time or another. If you make the curry without the jalapeños in it then the hotheads in your house will want at least one of the hot chili garnishes below to kick it up a notch.

• Chopped fresh cilantro leaves
• Toasted onion flakes
• Thinly sliced fresh jalapeños
• Chopped peanuts
• Chopped fresh mint leaves
• Chopped fresh basil leaves
• Minced fresh hot chilis
• Dried chili pepper flakes

Directions

Preheat oven to 350°. Get out your trusty enameled Dutch oven. Heat the olive oil in it over medium high heat and then sauté the onions and garlic until they start to brown (I let mine get really, really brown). Put in the meat and continue sautéing until all the sides are cooked a bit, then add the peppers and celery and cook for about another five minutes. Remove from heat. Pour in the coconut milk and garbanzo beans, stir in the peanut butter, tomato paste, celery leaves and curry, mixing it all together well. Salt to taste. If it looks a bit thick add some cream or a bit more olive oil. Cover and bake for an hour. Serve with rice. Feeds two with leftovers, would easily feed four.

Do you like a bit of bubbly during the holidays?

I do. It's part of our holiday traditions:

From Bubble Lights

I have always loved bubble lights and we put up some every year, even though they're a pain to keep upright and they burn out at a prodigious rate. We have a couple of strands with just a few working bulbs left in them that we keep on hand for the spare bulbs - the Christmas lights equivalent of having a second '72 Olds Cutlass up on blocks in the backyard for parts. I loved 'em as a kid and still do, and now our kids do, too, because we've put them up every year for the past eight years. I can't imagine Christmas without their bubbling cheer.

And speaking of traditions - it's a major award!

From Bubble Lights

Last year we received this light as a Christmas gift. Some year I'm ordering the real deal for myself, my father and father-in-law, and we're all gonna put them in our living room windows for Christmas, our respective wives' opinions be damned!

And then I must tell the story behind our "spare tree":

From Bubble Lights

It's one of those little fiber optic jobs that has the light in the base with a rotating color filter to send up different colors through the strands in different parts of the tree. It stands about two and a half feet tall. It's pretty but nothing special. Except Les loves this tree.

From 2001 through early 2005 I was a "road warrior". A large part of that time was spent in England, three to five weeks at a time, often with only a week home before returning. In fact, I was over there during the Christmas season (but thankfully never Christmas itself) three years running. In 2004 (I think) I was gone for most of November and December. During a brief week home in early December Les wanted me to put up the Christmas tree and I balked. I was in a "Bah, humbug!" mood from all the travel, and I didn't want to put the tree up because it was a hassle and I wouldn't be around to enjoy it and then I'd just have to take it down again in January during another quick trip back home. Why bother?

Well, let's just say it devolved down into a major fight, Les in tears, me in a huff. Not the high point of our relationship and frankly something I'm ashamed of. Later that day I went shopping and saw this little tree at Le Monde du Wally and the wisdom of Linus van Pelt popped into my head, and I exclaimed, "I never thought it was such a bad little tree!" I bought it, brought it home and while Les was out I "put up the tree" (unboxed it and plugged it in). When she came back to the house and saw the tree she loved it. I had gone from being a louse to the hero of compromise. And so Christmas was saved.

Every year we put up the "spare tree" somewhere in the house - this year it's on the fireplace hearth in our bedroom. It's become a tradition. I think others have similar stories to tell:

"We have a little fiber-optic tree that sits on the table top and slowly spins and iridesces most cheesily. Plus it's getting old, so now it groans as it spins. There's not a single element of it you'd call 'natural.' And that's what Christmas is all about, Charlie Brown."
- Mark Price, cousin, friend, funny guy

What weird little traditions does your family have around Christmas?

It's a bit brisk out

Two days ago it was 52°. Now it's 6°. This winter's already been like a rollercoaster, and it is just getting started. But unlike many family and friends we have avoided any major "weather events" and their associated fun, like power outages and road closures and toppled trees. Today's cold snap just means the furnace is going to run non-stop today. Although I dreamed about the sun room roof leaking last night, which I hope isn't a harbinger of what's in store over the next few months.

If you're reading this somewhere where it's snowing and blowing and nasty out, good - that means you still have electricity! As I've been telling my snow-and-ice-bound blogging friends in Portland and Ft. Wayne and elsewhere - "Stay safe. Stay warm. Stay electrified."

[And Cindy, you can just go pound sand. :o) ]

Maybe I'm doing it wrong

[Warning: Theology post.]

You ever worry if there are things that everyone seems to just know how to do and nobody talks about but there's a nagging voice in your head wondering if you're doing it wrong?

"I say, you're doing it all wrong, boy!"
- Foghorn J. Leghorn

Take wiping, for instance. And yeah, I mean that kind. We were all taught how to do that for ourselves as part of a toilet training process that is so long ago and so psychologically buried that we can't remember it. We've just always done it. And I bet for each of us, we've always done it a certain way - any other way would just feel wrong. But how do you know what is the right way? Maybe you're not doing it right. And it's not like you can clear it up over lunch sometime with your buddy and say, "Hey, Mike! Can I ask you a question? It's been kinda bothering me for a while and I gotta know - how do you wipe, man? 'Cause I think I'm doing it all wrong and was wondering if you could pass along some tips? Maybe even show me? It'd be a big help, buddy."

How do you think that would go over?

And no, I am not here to talk about wiping, I am just using it as an example (to which the collective readership breathes a sigh of relief). But there are other things just as personal that we learned a long time ago and that nobody talks about and that are embarrassing to ask about now. To ask about how to do such things now would expose our vulnerability and place us outside "the club" that "just knows." There are many such touchy subjects.

Like prayer.

If you were raised a Christian then sometime between the age of two and three you were taught to clasp your hands and bow your head and scrunch up your eyes real tight while some adult blathered on before dinner about thanks for this and pleadings for that and people who were sick that you didn't know. You fidgeted and squirmed, and finally it would grind to a halt with an "Amen!" and then you could eat. A bit later on you were even taught to "say grace", first via rote memorization. I grew up with:

God is good
God is great
And we thank Him
for our food.
Amen

Les's family (and our kids) learned:

Come Lord Jesus
be our guest
and let these gifts
to us be blessed.
Amen

In fact, there was a long-running and bitter theological war between the kids for a year or more over whether it should be "thy gifts" or "these gifts." I finally stepped in and settled the matter by declaring "these gifts" to be of the recognized canon in our household. But I digress.

Still later we then learned how to "pray" ourselves. Or at least, I think we did. Maybe. We'd offer up our own wishes and worries at dinner, or in church. Tentative at first, then with more confidence as we learned the lingo and the patterns. Sometimes they were sincere, heartfelt pushes of thoughts upward ('cause isn't that where Heaven is? Up?) Sometimes they were more praying "at" someone - "Dear God, please make my brother Jon quit kicking me under the table." Prayer as passive-aggression.

Meanwhile, week-in and week-out at church we were taught that prayer involved:

• A "respectful" posture - hands folded, head bowed.
• Formalized language - the KJV Bible may be dead in many churches but everyone still recites "Thy Kingdom come" when it comes time for the Lord's prayer.
• A lot of repetition and rote.
• A seemingly never-ending stream of words.
• Always asking for something.

Can you name anyone else you talk to that way? God wants a relationship with us, but it's easier to hold Him off with a barrage of words and rituals, I think. Stay focused on reciting the script and there won't be any chance of actually having Him send the Spirit into our hearts to make some real change.

Anyway, I think I'm "doing it wrong". For one, sometimes I pray not just to the Father and the Son, but to the Spirit, too. I remember reading somewhere that in fact we should pray to the Spirit, since He is the one that is with us and within us (literally in our head and heart). He is the one who will intercede for us with "groans that words cannot express." He is the one I worry about pissing off the most, and you don't want to piss off the Spirit. And He is coequal.

For another, I tend not to be very formal when I pray. I pray almost daily in the shower, and while my head may be bowed my hands typically aren't clasped. I am working on getting rid of a lot of the "God-talk," too, because that isn't me, and it gets in the way of real communication, and hence a real relationship. I try to give thanks as much or more as to ask for help or forgiveness.

But I worry. Maybe I am committing a heresy by praying to the Spirit as well as the Father and the Son. Maybe I am bringing down judgment for praying in the shower and not on my knees by my bed (gee, isn't that how you were taught to say bedtime prayers?)

Maybe I ask for too much. Or maybe I am being proud and self-reliant and don't ask for enough. Maybe I pray the wrong thing to the wrong Person in the Trinity. If I misaddress the prayer will it end up undelivered? Maybe I am pointing my prayer in the wrong direction. Is it a beam or ever-widening concentric circles of prayer radiating out into space? Maybe I don't "assume the position" correctly.

I dunno.

So? How do you pray?

Or if that's a bit too personal a question...

How do you wipe?

Higher than high

The following screen shot was taken at 6:45 am. I think we need a new word for the weather term "High", since it clearly doesn't mean what I think it means.

[Click to enlarge]

One feed to rule them all and in the darkness bind them

Ah, Web 2.0:

If you read this blog on the Web instead of via a feed (people still do that? - how quaint), then over the past few weeks you've seen the above appear in the title area. For the most part they consist of badges with links to my profiles on various "social networking" sites, inviting you to "friend" or "follow" me. Feel free, that's what they're there for. But if I don't know you I'll probably demur from accepting an invite, so if you're one of my blogging friends but send me an invite from a MySpace user name of "2kewl4sk00l" you'd better put something in the message letting me know who you really are.

Social networking is fun. I interact daily with people around the world using it, and have gotten back in touch with people from up to 40 years ago using LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, et al. Family, friends, former and current coworkers all in daily contact - a happy fun ball of sociality! But there's a problem lurking under the pleasant, friendly facade of all these sites, and no, it isn't some supposed loss of privacy.

It is loss of time.

"It started out as a social thing, ya know? Something I did with my friends. Then pretty soon it got out of control. I was emailing and IMing and blogging and updating my status on 13 different sites and throwing snowballs and decorating Christmas trees and sending pics from my phone and taking movie quizzes and nudging and poking and tweeting...and then, one day, I didn't even know which site I was on or whose wall I was writing on. I had hit the bottom. Next stop, hell."

Because the care and feeding of social networks requires as much or more effort as the care and feeding of email. And we already know how much time that can take. So along comes software to solve the problems caused by social networking software (all software is just infinite layers of problems deferred to another layer). Aggregators that can scrape status feeds off of various sites and/or set your status across multiple sites. Sounds great. Sign me up! Except none of them quite give you all the coverage you need, which was the meaning behind my GraphJam graph the other day:

There's even more software out there trying to do the same thing. All of it fails in one way or another, mostly around lack of coverage (see the badges, above). Plus the popular ones are suffering growing pains. Add to all that the fact that many of the sites being aggregated don't want to be, because they want to drive you to their site so they can throw ads at your eyeballs. I don't know for certain but I suspect that's why posting to MySpace from ping.fm was working but now is not:


So, what's the answer? I dunno. I do know that sooner or later the lower traffic sites in terms of friend-interactions (I'm looking at you, GoodReads!) are either going to get dropped, or are going to have to be successfully supported by an aggregator that can do both updates to the site and friend feeds from it. And while I'm at it, let's throw in email, chat and feed reading, too. What I want is something like:

Gmail+Google Reader+FriendFeed+SocialThing+Gridjit+ping.fm+Twitter+Meebo=World Domination

It should be Web-based with no client to install, accessible from anywhere using Windows, OS/X, Linux and my phone. It should just work. It should always be available. Oh, and it shouldn't have the clunkiness of iGoogle and a bunch of third party widgets I don't trust.

Is that too much to ask? :o)

Anyone know of anything that even comes close?

Offers for the coffers

[Warning: Theology post.]


We picked up our box of offering envelopes from church last week. The very first thing I did was go through it and separate all the tares from the wheat. There were the 52 weekly offering envelopes, and those I left in (because our church hasn't heard of EFT yet, I've asked - personally I wish they had). What I then pulled out to be consumed by fire consisted of:

• 12 Building Fund envelopes
• 6 Mission Offering envelopes
• 5 denomination elided High School envelopes
• 1 denomination elided magazine subscription envelope
• 1 denomination elided radio outreach envelope
• 1 denomination elided charity envelope
• 5 Lenten Offering envelopes
• 1 Ash Wednesday Offering envelope
• 1 Maundy Thursday Offering envelope
• 1 Good Friday Offering envelope
• 1 Thanksgiving Offering envelope
• 3 Advent Offering envelopes
• 1 Christmas Eve Offering envelope
• 1 Christmas Offering envelope
• 1 New Year's Eve Offering envelope

That's 41 additional envelopes sprinkled throughout the entire year, a grand total of 92 envelopes, or a chance to fork over some cash roughly every four days. Now don't get me wrong - I am not arguing against tithing (at least, not here :o). What I am complaining about is the feeling of, hmmm, how shall I say this? Continuous shakedown. You know those charities you sign up for in good conscience and then get pissed off and drop because they use your original money to send you ever more requests for money? Like that. What's the word I'm looking for? Hmmm...indulgences. Yeah, that's it.

I guess my real complaint is twofold. First, I consider money I give to the church, i.e., "my" church - the building and its mortgage, the paid staff, the parochial school assistance, the denomination and oh, yeah, somewhere less than 4% to actual outreach, mission and whatnot - should already be allocated to things like mission and the building. I shouldn't have to then add a special envelope in the plate just to "make sure" they're doing something for missionary work. When I am paid by my employer they don't put part of it into a special envelope marked "housing fund" and pin it to my sweater on my way home to make sure I pay my mortgage. They just expect me to take care of that. So why should I put extra money every month into a "building fund", whatever the fuck that means?

Barna studies consistently show Christians outgive non-Christians. Of course we do, we're conditioned to it. But those same studies show Christians come nowhere near tithing. Some of that is pure selfishness (it certainly is on my part). Some of it is giving to other charities, and not necessarily faith-based ones (gasp!). And some of it, I think, is from getting subtle and not-so-subtle hands-thrust-out messages from our church every four days. Sort of like the kids' school's "fun fair" with its "mandatory volunteers" (which is happening again this spring - grrr).

"Sorry. I gave at the office."

It's not fair, it's not accurate, and Bono himself shuffles around asking for cash for various causes now days, but I'll close with it, anyway:

"Well the God I believe in isn't short of cash, mister!"
- U2, Bullet the Blue Sky

Peace.

I'm somebody now!

Just a month ago I had checked Google Maps Street View feature but our town was not there yet. Then a few days ago I checked again and suddenly "Jeff City" is in there, and wait...there's our house!

[Hmmm - windy day last summer - the trash can's blown over]

You people in your big cities have grown accustomed to such things, but for Street View to hit the hinterlands shows Google's drive toward world domination total coverage. Here's what they have as of today:

[Click to enlarge]

I'm somebody now! Millions of people look at this book everyday! This is the kind of spontaneous publicity - your name in print - that makes people. I'm in print! Things are going to start happening to me now.
- Navin R. Johnson

Temperature gradient

Storm's a'comin':

Christmas time is here, redux

Well, without even planning it to land on the exact same date, we did the exact same thing on December 11 this year that we did last year (except this year we ate pizza before instead of me cooking dinner after). So instead of reposting it, I'll just direct you there. And miracle of miracles, the video links still work!

Merry Christmas, y'all!

Spew

[Danger! Danger, Will Robinson! Theology post ahead! Also a fair amount of introspective irony and self-convicting hypocrisy.]

I was taken by this ASBO Jesus cartoon from the other day:

Too many books indeed! Let's see what that authoritative reference, the Bible Google says on the topic "Christian books":


Seventeen million hits. A pretty impressive list of critiques, commentary and commercialism spawned from a book with only 66 books (chapters, or 775,000 words). But wait! "Christian blogs" have even more hits!


And then there are the weekly sermons. That makes x churches times 52 weeks multiplied by almost 500 years (for "simplicity" let's keep ourselves to the Reformation, shall we?). "Christian radio." "Christian TV." What must that all add up to? I figure 100,000 words of blather for every word in Scripture. And here I am, excreting a few more.

So much for "Sola scriptura", eh?

You know, for being the one Truth, it sure seems like the Bible needs a lot of exposition. Forget shuffling, I guess God must've mumbled, eh? To put it bluntly, maybe He had a speech impediment. Perhaps Yahweh needs to retake collegiate Composition and Rhetoric 101!

I am willing to bet money that more words are written about the Good Book than are actually in it, every single day. And I am just as guilty as the next person, writing a few more tidbits for the dung heap. Everybody wants to be Paul (well, except for the tent making, wandering, shipwrecked, prison and martyrdom parts). Nobody wants to be Onesimus. Silent. Servant. Sent. The average "Christian" blog (this one included) probably spouts more verbiage in a month than are in all the extant Epistles. Pathetic.

Sure, we Protestants want to believe that The Word needs to be brought to all people in their own idioms. Post-modernists want it dissected and reinterpreted. Preachers wanna preach. Poseurs want to pose. But how much of that is detracting from the actual Word? (hint: the phrase "99th percentile" leaps to mind). I liked something I read over at Sacred Sandwich, even as I was convicted by it:

I like resources that help me understand the Bible. My collection of commentaries grows yearly. The amount of books I own addressing various areas of theology numbers in the hundreds. There are a couple of websites that I visit regularly where numerous Bible study tools are offered. I also own four “Study Bibles,” which include not only the biblical text, but introductions and outlines for each book of the Bible, notes that explain verses, maps, articles about major concepts, and a large concordance at the back. I have been strengthened by all of these resources, and I’m confident others could testify likewise.

However, every good gift from God can be abused. Of all the study tools, perhaps in our day the Study Bible is the resource that is most often misused. For example, many who have taught the Bible have felt the frustration when, instead of meditating on the passage of Scripture being taught, several in the group were busy reading and then sharing from the study notes at the bottom of the page!

How often do we read books about the Bible instead of the Bible? Worse, how often do we read books interpreting what others have said about what others have said about what others have said about Jesus? Think that's outrageous? Why? There are lots of works out there that cover what someone in this century said contradicting someone from Victoria's reign arguing against someone in the Reformation who was spouting about the Church Fathers, who were speaking of the Apostles, who were, presumably, wired into talking about Jesus.

Fuck.

Satan lives in all this. Do you not see it? I do. In my own writing. Right here, right now. Here you are reading me when you could be reading the Bible, or better, being out living it. And here I am blathering at you when I could be reading the Bible, or better, being out living it. Pathetic. Blah blah blah. We all need to STFU!

So..."Got Scripture?" I need to go find mine now - the one without footnotes and commentary.

My first GraphJam graph!

I am a big fan of humor-of-crowds GraphJam (and also the one-person version, Jessica Hagy's indexed). So I finally made a graph of my own - it will be interesting to see if it ever makes it to GraphJam's feed. I think it has to be voted up to get to the feed, so click on the image and go vote! Or something. And then send me a message through a social networking aggregator to tell me you did! :o)

And yes, I really do belong to FriendFeed, SocialThing! and Gridjit for the reading side. Along with Twitter and Ping.fm for the publishing side. Disgusting, I know. The real point of the above graph is when will there be one aggregator to rule them all, and in the darkness bind them? That, my friends, will be called "Web 3.0".

Where the hell is Matt? In a new video!

After two years, a new Where the hell is Matt? video is out! This time he's dancing with other people (sometimes lots of other people), and that makes it even cooler. I always sit with a combination of smiles and tears when watching his videos. They touch me.



The 2006 video:



And the video that started it all:



Lots more is available at his web site. I'd especially recommend the 2006 outtakes, his five minute presentation on how he got people to dance with him, Where the hell is Afunakwa?, and, well, hell - everything else on his site. Go, have some smile time.

Barbie dream church

Over at The Sacred Sandwich:

[h.t. Chuck Warnock]

Wordle is kewl

Joe Bob sez, "Check it out."

Well, which one is it?

I am confused.

I have heard many Protestants, especially in my denomination where there is sort of a casual yet pervasive Catholic-bashing mindset, say that the celibacy of priests and nuns is "unnatural", that God invented sex for humans to enjoy, and that "all those child molesters in the Catholic clergy" are proof that we are not meant to repress sex, or else Bad Things Happen.

However, when confronted with the existence of homosexuality, those same people, at least those "enlightened" enough to understand it's not a "lifestyle" that can be "deprogrammed" but is instead something deeply rooted in the individual, probably through both nature and nurture, often offer up celibacy as the only viable, "right in the eyes of God" alternative for them to live out their entire lives.

Do you understand my confusion?

I am not here to argue about the rightness or wrongness of clerical celibacy. Nor do I want to bicker over the sinfulness of homosexuality. I just want to ask a single question - how can something be wrong and unnatural and against God's will if it is applied voluntarily to oneself in the very hope of conforming to God's will, and yet be the right course of action to recommend to someone whose desires were formed outside of their control and who may not want to spend their life never knowing sexual intimacy? And if someone is homosexual and a priest, does that make their celibacy right, then?

It's a conundrum. No wonder the secular world looks at us as a bunch of reactionary nut jobs.

Road trip, part 2!

Gas has been $1.59/gallon here for a week or so. Then tonight Hy-Vee, our grocery store, ran one of their periodic 10¢/gallon discounts if you had a grocery receipt from today (their everyday discount is 3¢/gallon, which isn't worth bothering). The truck needed gas so I bought 14.312 gallons for a total of $21.45 - $1.49/gallon, baby!

In post-oil-embargoed, inflationary, economically malaised 1978 I was working at a gas station in Boulder, Colorado pumping full service (remember that?) gas at 55¢/gallon. According to the government's inflation calculator, that'd be $1.83 today. Party like it's 1979!

Doing things half way can be good

Chuck's excellent post on the impact of the recession on churches, denominations and parachurch ministries has had me thinking. There's lots of good stuff there, go read it. But here's one thing to consider:

Some faith-based organizations will go broke or be downsized, succumbing to economic forces that cut off credit and squeeze contributors. Hard ministry decisions will be made as budget shortfalls loom.  The local church will pass along this economic reordering to denominations and parachurch ministries which will also cut staff and programs to the bare essentials.

Churches are, or should be, different than businesses, I think. A business is about profit, period. But churches are about relationships. People. Including the people that work there. I wonder how many will consider layoffs vs. offering temporary cut backs on hours and pay? If a person was hired for a reason - in a church's case, a mission - then presumably that reason doesn't cease to exist simply because they're laid off. Isn't it better to keep them on half time and try to fulfill at least part of their mission rather than simply to throw in the towel and lay them off completely?

Because here's the deal - while most church workers don't get paid much and probably can't survive on half pay, at least not forever, it would still be better than unemployment benefits, and it would be much better better than no pay. If I were offered the choice by my employer between being laid off or working half-time for half-pay until some objective, measurable profitability goal was reached by the organization, I would choose the half-time/half-pay scenario in a heartbeat. Wouldn't you?

Now some will argue, "Yeah, but they'll just leave anyway, because they have to make ends meet." And that might be correct, especially if we were talking about for-profit business jobs. But if you were going to lay them off instead, then they would be gone anyway, and immediately - so what's the difference? Isn't it better to continue to get their education, experience and effort for a while anyway? Also, I bet many (most) church workers are actually dedicated to their jobs and their church and do see it as mission, and as long as there is some reason to believe that when times get good again they will be restored to full-time and full pay many would tough it out for the good of the church. Finally, in this economy it may be hard for them to find another job, and if you care about them as human beings it is better to show that by continuing to employ them part-time until they can find something to replace it.

I fear Chuck is right about this point (I hope he is right about some of his other predictions), and yet I pray, in line with the rest of his post, that churches use this time to think creatively and not just respond as the world responds to hard times, with layoffs, treating people as expendible.

8-Track of the Year nominations

I am a little late to the game, but Chuck has a great post about obsolesence:

As 2008 draws to a close, we turn our thoughts to the prestigious “8-Track of the Year” awards.  For those too young to remember, 8-track tapes were all the rage back in the 1970s.  A big, clunky endless loop tape was the hottest technology available.  You could actually play them in your car!  Imagine, music in your car…boggles the mind.  Anyway, 8-tracks are now the dinosaur of the digital age, which brings me back to our topic at hand: The 2008 8-Track Awards!

Here’s how this works:  Nominate the church idea, practice, or product that is now completely obsolete.  Totally useless.  Nobody goes there anymore, kind-of-thing.  Example:  the weekly church bulletin service — you got a different blank bulletin with appropriate  full-color art work on the front.  Ideal for running through your “ditto” machine (remember?).  Okay, now it’s your turn.  The idea is to chronicle the changing church and how yesterday’s ideas are so, well, yesterday.  Have fun, play nice, and get your nominations in today!

Since it's still garnering comments, I think you should all go over there and add your own. My nomination? Offering envelopes, especially personalized boxes of them stamped with the member family's "number". It's the 21st century now. It's called "direct deposit."

At play with God

[Warning: Religion post, blah blah blah.]

I just finished re-reading Kathleen Norris's Dakota and now am on to re-enjoying The Cloister Walk, after which I will probably revisit Amazing Grace. Which, if memory serves, is in exactly the opposite order in which I first read them. All are such good books I tire of recommending them every other week here. Just go, read them. Any of them. You'll fall in love with them, too.

I like Norris so much because her long, twisted path back to Christianity resonates with my own spiritual journey. Once you have read how she got there it makes perfect sense that she ended up as both a member of her grandmother's Episcopal church as well as an oblate (lay member) of a Benedictine monastery. Obviously she sees no problem with being part of multiple church families at the same time.

I am a hedonist by nature - always have been. Perhaps in some perverse sense that is why I enjoy reading about monks so much. Maybe I am a closeted monastic at heart. And one of the things I find most fascinating is that so many monks, whether Buddhist or Catholic or Lutheran (yes, Lutheran) have such finely developed senses of humor, the ability to see life as holy play. Norris, a poet, picks up on that and transmit it very well. Following are some quotes from Dakota that attempt to show what I mean.

The ceremony put us in a good mood. We stood in small groups, visiting. With the blue light of dusk came the smell of rain. A few drops; not enough to make much difference, but something. Bats began shooting from the pottery building to the monastery proper and the novice, a shy and bearish young man, picked a sprig of lilac to take to his room. He lumbered off with it, holding it close to his chest, the purple made more vivid by the severe black of his habit. "Take more," an old monk called to him. "Take more."

...

My monasticism is an odd one. it's not play-acting, though I've wondered about that at times. It isn't even a case of what monks call "Benedictine-wanna-be." No matter how much liturgy I attend with my monastic friends, I am not vowed to their communities, and that's what counts. But through the grace of Benedictine hospitality I have felt welcomed to church for the first time since I was a child. Theirs is in fact a childlike church, though it's anything but childish. Monks sing a good deal, they listen to stories without much interpretation, and despite (or perhaps because of) their disciplined lives, they seem more at ease with their faith than most other Christians I've met, tending to live it quietly rather than proselytize.

...

Visits to monasteries are as old as monasteries themselves. We think of monks as being remote from the world, but Saint Benedict, writing in the sixth century, notes that a monastery is never without guests, and admonishes monks to "receive all guests as Christ." Monks have been quick to recognize that such hospitality, while undoubtedly a blessing, can also create burdens for them. A story said to originate in a Russian Orthodox monastery has an older monk telling a younger one: "I have finally learned to accept people as they are. Whatever they are in the world, a prostitute, a prime minister, it is all the same to me. But sometimes I see a stranger coming up the road and I say, 'Oh, Jesus Christ, is it you again?'"

...

Monks are symbols of such a deep human longing that, paradoxically, others often have trouble seeing them as human beings. This is a complaint monks will make to anyone who will listen. "If another person says, 'It's so peaceful here,' I'll scream," one monk said to me.

...

At one abbey, when the abbot is away, the guestmaster sometimes installs me in his seat. This may be a ploy to determine if the novices across the way are awake. At another, when I remarked that my stereotypes had been shattered, expecting monks would hate women, a monk replied, "You came at the right time. We had one like that, but he died."

One day it occurred to me that the playfulness I found in so many of the monks was in part explained by the fact that they are indeed playing in a serious way, dressing up in their habits for the Divine Office, singing soft hymns of praise to wake themselves and gentle, maternal lullabies at the end of day, following a way of life that, ancient and honorable as it is, very much resembles a child's way of being. When I shared this insight with an older monk, an exceptionally wise and playful gentleman, he nodded and said, "Of course it's play. If it weren't, we wouldn't still be doing it after 1,500 years."

...

One memorable evening I witnessed an inspired union of playfulness and a thoughtful interpretation of Benedictine hospitality in the form of a vigorous pillow fight. I was visiting an abbey with a ten-year-old girl whose parents' divorce was becoming final in the next week. She and her mother had had a rough year, and the girl was getting her first taste of joint custody, spending the summer with her father. I met her at the bus stop that morning with a monk who carried a small bouquet; he'd picked some of the summer's last roses for the girl, because her name was Rose.

The pressures on this child were considerable; among other things, she feared the possibility of having to testify in a custody hearing. I was grateful to be able to offer her a day of play: we called on the abbot, walked the abbey grounds, pulled a few weeds in a flower bed, and attended a ceremony at which a novice received his monastic name, a solemn form of play that fascinated the girl.

One young monk, extremely introverted, befriended her at lunch and came to our room after vespers. But she had become tired and whiny, and fell on her bed with exaggerated drama, clutching a pillow. As the monk got up to leave, he carried off a move that would have done Buster Keaton proud, snatching the pillow from under her head and whacking her with it. Taken by surprise, Rose was both affronted and delighted. She grabbed another pillow, stood on the bed and hit him back, and the fight was on. It continued for nearly a half hour and was marked by brilliant tactics on both sides. When the girl grabbed the monk by his scapular, he pointed out that she had merely drawn him closer, making it easier for him to hit her. She groaned and deposited one more blow to his head. He got her in the stomach.

When the two had finally had enough (I became exhausted just watching them) the monk left and we went to bed. Rose slept soundly for fourteen hours. And that was the point: to give a frightened little girl a chance to hit - and hit hard - tiring her so she couldn't help but have a good night's sleep. All she had to do was be herself, a little girl who enjoys a pillow fight. In putting the child's needs before his own, the monk was doing battle with his natural shyness. He was also having fun. It was Benedictine hospitality at its best.

One important element of play involves mimicking, and sometimes mocking, the things that grownups or superiors do. A monk who makes vestments once showed me a scarlet cassock he'd made for an archbishop, complete with tassels on a long cord belt. He said, quietly, "I held these like a microphone when I wore this for Halloween."

...

Because they do the liturgy every day, morning, noon, and night, monastic people often develop a relaxed attitude about the holy that can alarm the more rigidly pious. On a major feast day at a Mass held jointly with a parish congregation, the monk who handed the full offering bowl to an acolyte (another monk) whispered, "Don't spend it all in one place." The game, of course, is to carry on with a straight face. Once I was enjoying the silence before vespers when a monk in the row of choir stalls behind me leaned over and whispered, "Could you keep it down?"

...

Gradually the novice discovers that a forced observation of little things can also lead to simple pleasures. A young monk once told me he'd been delighted to find that the worn black wool of the habit he'd been given was excellent for sliding down banisters. He demonstrated, and for a moment became an angel: without feet, all irrepressible joy.

...

What sets monks apart from the rest of us is not an overbearing piety but a contemplative sense of fun. They know, as Trappist monk Matthew Kelty reminds us, that "you do not have to be holy to love God. You have only to be human. Nor do you have to be holy to see God in all things. You have only to play as a child with an unselfish heart." The play of monks comes out of what I earlier termed an inner necessity; the humble acknowledgment that, for them, the liturgy must be a daily affair, a chore. They need to act it out, making the circle, singing and saying and hearing the words again and again, as a child asks to hear a beloved story many times over.

"...as a child asks to hear a beloved story many times over." Don't you just love that?

:o)

...and music still on MTV...(part 7)